We need a National Service Reserve for disasters like Maria, Irma and Harvey

FEMA Administrator Brock Long said Tuesday the process of recovering from the damage of Irma will be complex and frustrating and added it may be a while before residents can get back to big parts of the Florida Keys. (Sept. 12)
AP

This project could restore a lot more than hurricane-damaged homes. It could help us rebuild something much larger — national common ground.

Volunteer rescuers help a woman from her inundated home after Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas, on Aug. 30, 2017.(Photo: Joe Raedle, Getty Images)

The devastation left by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria is immense, and the work ahead is daunting: responding to the basic needs of millions, rebuilding ravaged communities, helping families move back into their homes or find new ones. In the face of these challenges, people from across the country have stepped up to help. They’re sending money, collecting supplies, lending their couches or spare rooms to people who have been displaced by the storms. Still, many want to do more.

And there will be new disasters in the years ahead — fast-moving ones like hurricanes and wildfires, and slower-moving ones like the water crisis in Flint, Mich. We will want to help, and our help will be needed: Emergency response officials are increasingly relying on the public to augment their efforts.

So what if we had a more effective way to activate volunteers when crises occur?

Hillary Clinton and her policy team proposed an innovative idea last year that went largely unnoticed: the establishment of a National Service Reserve. It would create a new way for millions of Americans to serve their communities and country.

Most conversations about national service focus on full-time programs for young people college age who sign up for a year or two with programs such as the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps. Those programs have touched millions of lives and represent America’s most cherished values. But they require a time commitment that many can’t make.

That’s where a new National Service Reserve would come in.

It would be similar to the armed forces reserve. It would be voluntary. Members would commit to one weekend of training every two months. They could be called up once every two years for a defined period of time to deal with a local or national crisis. Employers and universities would agree to give participants the time off without any penalty. And reservists would earn certifications for their work, including credentials for specialized skills they develop, which could be useful for their careers down the line.

Rather than operate at the federal level, however, the service reserve would be organized state by state, like the National Guard. It would generally be called up by governors or mayors through delegated authority. It would be activated by the federal government only in times of acute need.

When I lived in Minnesota, I joined the American Red Cross National Preparedness & Response Corps. I got trained in handling the needs of displaced families, and was “called up” — literally, the dispatcher would call my house in the middle of the night — to help people find shelter and get back on their feet after house fires.

The National Service Reserve would take this kind of work to scale. Millions of people could participate. Reservists could be deployed after disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or Harvey or the tornadoes that ripped through Joplin, Miss. There is so much that needs to happen in the weeks and months after events like these — tons of debris to be moved; water, food, clothes and blankets to be delivered; homes to be built; children to be cared for while their parents focus on putting their lives back together.

The service reserve could also be put to work to address pressing social and environmental problems — helping serve at-risk youth or respond to the opioid epidemic, restoring state parks or turning abandoned lots into green spaces in cities nationwide.

The need is clearly there. We see it every time we turn on the news. And the demand is there, too. AmeriCorps receives five times more applications than it has spots to fill,and the Peace Corps saw a 32% jump in applications in 2015 alone.

The logistics, budget and legal authorities would have to be debated and decided, and we'd have to determine when and how the service reserve is activated. We would also need to set aside resources to evaluate deployments and measure outcomes — we’d want to make sure the program is having a real impact.

But the fact that this will take some work shouldn’t deter us. We’re a country that sets big goals and then does what it takes to reach them. And all this is entirely achievable, not least because this is fundamentally non-partisan in nature. It is something everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents — can get behind.

A National Service Reserve would give millions of Americans the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves, without having to give up their careers or miss out on family obligations. And it would give our responders at all levels — federal, state and local — the backup they need to tackle any crisis.

Perhaps most important, it would bring people of all walks of life together in service of a shared mission. The service reserve could restore a lot more than hurricane-damaged homes. It could help us rebuild something much larger — national common ground. That’s something America badly needs right now.

Jake Sullivan was Hillary Clinton's senior policy adviser on her 2016 presidential campaign. His other positions have included national security adviser to Vice President Biden and director of policy planning at the State Department.